Monthly Archives: April 2015

The official Call for Papers for the 2015 SLATE Conference is NOW OPEN. The SLATE Conference is one of the premier educational technology conferences in the Midwest, known for offering a wide variety of topics ranging from best practices and pedagogy, to innovative teaching resources and cutting edge technologies. Speakers are encouraged to submit proposals whose general focus is the use of technology in teaching and learning regardless of the platform or tools being used. To learn more about the conference, including speaker guidelines, session formats, venue, registration, etc., go to the conference website and use the navigation links on the right side of the screen to access the desired information.

The 13th Annual SLATE Conference the Midwest’s premier teaching and learning technology event, has attracted participants from across the country and around the world in higher-ed, K-12, government, and the corporate sector.
The conference will be held on October 21-23, 2015 and hosted by Northern Illinois University at their regional campus in Naperville, IL (thirty minutes from downtown Chicago).

In 2000, a famous experiment showed that when people were presented with a supermarket sampler of 24 exotic fruit flavors, they were more attracted to the display. But, when the sample included only six flavors, they were 10 times more likely to actually buy.

This experiment contributed to the literature of what’s known as “the paradox of choice.” Too many choices can lead to feelings of frustration, dissatisfaction and paralysis, which is especially bad in cases where not making a choice is the worst one of all.

College is no different from jam, according to a surprising new book, Redesigning America’s Community Colleges. The authors, three Columbia University education researchers, argue that the best way to help the largest number of students get through college is to give them fewer pathways than they have now.

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Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work nine or ten months a year!It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do — babysit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and planning — that equals 6-1/2 hours).

So each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to babysit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585 a day.

However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations!!

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6-1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

$1.42 per hour per student — a very inexpensive babysitter and they even EDUCATE your kids.

WHAT A DEAL!!!!

And what about those expensive Teacher’s Pensions?
Turns out, tax payers aren’t even supposed to pay those. The teachers agreed to let the administrators withhold a percentage of their current wages, place those wages into growth & interest paying pension account so the teachers could then withdraw back their own wages (plus growth and interest), in their retirement years.

The fact that somebody in administration siphoned off some of that money (the teachers didn’t– they aren’t allowed to) has caused many of those pension funds to run low and therefore (by law) the administrators are now turning to the taxpayers to replenish the funds they borrowed from the teachers’ pension fund. Now, that’s a problem, but it’s not the teachers that caused the problem.

Make a teacher smile; repost this to show appreciation for all educators.